When All My Five and Country Senses See
When All My Five and Country Senses See - form Summary
Sonnet-shaped Sensory Overload
This poem is a sonnet that channels synesthetic, sensory imagery into a compact emotional argument. Thomas lists and fuses the five senses with rural and cosmic images, creating a crowded sensory scene that is then resolved in the final lines: the speaker’s single "noble heart" remembers and bears witness when the senses fail. The sonnet form concentrates the intensity and gives a decisive concluding turn toward internal feeling.
Read Complete AnalysesWhen all my five and country senses see, The fingers will forget green thumbs and mark How, through the halfmoon's vegetable eye, Husk of young stars and handfull zodiac, Love in the frost is pared and wintered by, The whispering ears will watch love drummed away Down breeze and shell to a discordant beach, And, lashed to syllables, the lynx tongue cry That her fond wounds are mended bitterly. My nostrils see her breath burn like a bush. My one and noble heart has witnesses In all love's countries, that will grope awake; And when blind sleep drops on the spying senses, The heart is sensual, though five eyes break.
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